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Review by TBM  - Location: Loveland,Clermont,OH
- Cost: $79 per month
- Install: about 8 days
Good "Price"
Bad "HD not quite as good as Directv."
Overall "Worth the $Savings."
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Hello all,
I recently switched my internet and tv service so I thought it was time to give my impressions on the new , to my neighborhood, Cincinnati Bell Fioptics service. I am coming from TWC Roadrunner Standard Internet service (up to 10 Mbps for 53.95 a month) and Directv Satellite service (choice xtra package with HD Dvr, and second sd receiver in the bedroom for approx. $80.00 per month.
Price for the Fioptics (FTTH) Service for 20/5 Mbps service and Elite TV package (approx 200+ channels, 100 HD) NO CONTRACT is 74.99 a month. So I am getting twice as fast internet and tv for less than my previous tv package. Savings of $55.00 a month. You can't beat that!
The Installation took around 5 hrs and the tech was friendly and knowledgeable. He installed the fiber from the pole to a new ont in my garage. Then he ran cat 5 to my HD set and gateway and coax for a second tv in the attic. The gateway/Router is a ZTE ZXHN H368C You won"t find much info on the net about this router so I am not sure of the features. Everything is run from this box. My HD DVR is self branded B703V3 HD DVR which supports HDMI with Dolby Digital Plus.
The Internet service IS as advertised. I consistently get slightly under 20 Mbps and 5 Mbps up. Awesome! The wireless seems fine with decent range (although I live in a small house) YMMV.
The HD signal is ok. I do seem to have some motion blur that I never noticed with directv. Also the colors presented seem to be oversaturated, so some adjustment may be required. I have never had my set professionally calibrated but i did set it according to some that have, I got my settings from AVS forum poster and it was a great picture on Directv. I can live with these issues for the money saved but if you are sensitive to motion blur or a color purist this may not work for you.
The DVR interface is adequate. It is limited compared to directv, but not too bad. I seen many images and complaints on the interwebs concerning this. I think they must have updated or redesigned it because the speed is good and it looks nothing like the images I've seen. The guide comes up full screen and list 6 channels with an info bar of the present channel. It also show 2 hrs. of programming. The format can be changed to list view, which i don"t care for. You can only scroll one channel at a time or enter the channel number to change location in the guide. Setting recordings is simple and straightforward. You can record only new or all episodes on only a single channel or all channels. You can adjust the start and finish time to your liking. I haven't tried it yet, but I am supposed to be able to record 2 shows at once. The tech said the dvr has a 320 GB harddrive so the storage should be adequate.
The Remote is learning remote, URC 2056-CXX. It is very similar to the directv remote and seems to be good. The one thing I love about it is it has backlighting for the keys.
Overall I'm very pleased with the service bang for the buck. I have heard that C Bell likes to raise your rates later and there have been reports of questionable billing practices. I can't speak to that at this time but I will report back if and when anything changes.
member for 35 days, 4 visits, last login: 29 days ago
updated 33 days ago
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| Review by MommaNancy - Location: Cincinnati,Hamilton,OH
- Cost: $137 per month (79 month contract)
 Cincinnati Bell
Good "Picture quality when it connects..WHEN IT CONNECTS! is very good...that is all the good!"
Bad "I could go on for hours about the bad! Cost is nearly double the contract, liars, thieves,flat out refuse to correct the issue "
Overall "Never Ever go with Cin Bell for any product for any reason! They lie constantly, C.S is awful! "
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I have had my internet, cable & home phone (which I never wanted but was told it would cost me more to delete as it was a BUNDLE!) since 12/18/2012 & have on a constant basis tried to get customer service to explain why the $79.99 advertised price which I have the flyer for is now being billed at $132-140 a month when I never rent movies or use long distance phone charges! And if you think you can just call & speak to a service rep...Ha Ha, you will get some one in Istanbull-Crap or India-Nuttin, for i think they must have 5 Employees that actually are employed in the USof A! They will lie, cheat & just make up crap to get you off the phone, the system goes down daily, and if you attempt to call & don't accept their bullcrap, they transfer you to the "Mythical Department" called "Retention" & never again will they pick up the phone, you are on eternal hold regardless of the hours you sit & wait, they will wait you out & never answer your call! This company has slid on the fast speed lane to Customer Service Hell & I am sure to never to return to anything better! STAY AWAY FROM CINCINNATI BELL FOR ANY SERVICE FOR ANY REASON ! TRUST ME, YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR, SO PAY TIME WARNER OR SOMEONE ELSE, THEY ARE A NIGHTMARE & YOUR LIFE WILL NEVER BE THE SAME! A TEARFUL DESPONDENT & DISABLED MAWMAW...MOMMANANCY
member for 49 days, 2 visits, last login: 46 days ago
lodged 46 days ago
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 | | Cincinnati DSL Review “I work for Cincinnati Bell and we have an active Social Media Team. If you submit your issue here »tinyurl.com/CBSocialSupport or email cincinnati.bell@fuse.net, our social media team will help you.” | |
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| Review by Shortcirkit - Location: Cincinnati,Hamilton,OH
- Cost: $125 per month
- Install: about 180 days
- Cincinnati Bell
Good "Blazing fast at everything!!!!"
Bad "It took 6 months to get the right technician to make it work"
Overall "Worth it! Just make sure the tech installs new wire to router direct!!!"
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Had Time Warner. Too high priced. Had a lot of freezing but finally got it fixed on the 4th of July 2013. Yesterday. Had since December 2012. At first it was okay but things started getting worse after 2 months. Freezing Screens and internet.
But after new cat 5 e cable installed from Box outside direct to modem it is flawless.
I have 6 High Def boxes 2 computers a Roku streaming box and a PlayStation 3 all running on the 50 MB service with no issues as of 11:33 on July 5th 2013
ZTE Set Top Boxes and Zyxel Modem Combo. No more dongle for TV..
Tim was my tech yesterday. He is the best for sure.
member for 92 days, 0 visits, last login: 92 days ago
lodged 92 days ago
Comments:
| Review by ITpro452 - Location: Cincinnati,Hamilton,OH
- Cost: $35 per month
- Install: about 5 days
Good "Modern technology (fiber). U.S.A. tech support."
Overall "Satisfied customer. Good value."
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I have FTTN (fiber to the node, then DSL to the house) internet only, 10mbps down, 1mbps up.
Bottom line- reliability above average, speed as advertised, happy customer.
For you techies out there, here's more detail:
My FTTN has an intermittent latency problem, which manifests as slowly loading web pages. For the most part, it does not interrupt my work, as it tends to resolve itself within a couple hours. It happens every couple weeks.
No ISP is going to help with anything beyond a simple speed test, but this type of latency does not degrade speed tests. The more I read about different ISP's, I think CinBell is above average in their performance and support.
My problem is most likely in the old wiring in the house, but it could be tree limbs drooping on the wire in weather events. Or it could be some bizarre interference on the street DSL from my bizarre neighbors.
Either way, it's much better than my previous Verizon Wireless hotspot, and I vowed I would never go back to Time Warner 20 years ago.
member for 155 days, 2 visits, last login: 107 days ago
lodged 107 days ago
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| Review by ts1884 - Location: Florence,Boone,KY
- Cost: $40 per month
- Install: about 10 days
- Cincinnati Bell
Good "Nothing"
Bad "Slow intermittent service"
Overall "Not a good deal"
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Ordered Zoomtown on a Monday and home phone on Thursday of the same week. Tech showed up Thursday to check connections for Zoomtown but modem hadn't arrived yet. Said connections were fine. That was a lie. Modem arrived later Thursday but wouldn't power on. I had to take the modem to Cinn Bell or wait until they ship another. Second modem didn't work. Cinn Bell did a diagnostics from their end, India I think, and said the modem was bad. Back to Cinn Bell. Third modem didn't work. Called Cinn Bell. Another tech was sent days later. In the mean time, home phone was to be turned on the following day of the order, Friday. Called them at 5:30pm to find out what time service was going to on and was told "by 7pm". That was a lie. Called customer service on Saturday and was told service would not be on until the following Wednesday. After complaining, Cinn Bell expedited the order to be on Saturday between 5 & 7pm. That was a lie. To wrap this up... it took about ten days, three tech visits, three tech diagnostics from their office chairs, four lies from customer service, 16 hours of lost work waiting on techs to arrive, 8 hours on the phone w/thech support / customer service, from start to finish to get internet and phone working only to find out I can't use my VOIP when Xbox is on, I am paying for 5mps service and getting from 482kbps to 1.3mps download speed because that's the limit for my neighborhood due to old equipment provided by Cincinnati Bell. Seems to me when they tell you you'll get 5 megs and your charged for it, you should get that speed. As much as I came to dislike the cable company...I NEVER had a problem with service, just pricing. I guess it's true, you get what you pay for.
member for 112 days, 0 visits, last login: 112 days ago
lodged 112 days ago
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| Review by Franklin - Location: Fairfield,Butler,OH
- Cost: $65 per month
- Cincinnati Bell
Good "used to be pretty fast"
Bad "seems now that they put fiops up the street (not us yet) speed sucks"
Overall "I want speed but who knows when FiOps will come - plans are secret"
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We live on winding hilly road. Large subdivision up the street and down the hill, they are served by different substations. We begged for a DSL line 12 years ago and have had mostly good service. But now FiOps going in up the street where our service comes from and now our speed has dropped. We can't get cable unless we pay to have line run up the street (we use SAT TV). Cinti Bell tells me they don't know when or if FiOps is coming my way, they keep that a secret. I am willing to pay for speed but no one can tell me how to get it.
member for 318 days, 2 visits, last login: 225 days ago
lodged 224 days ago
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| Review by Adelphia - Location: Cincinnati,Hamilton,OH
- Cost: $40 per month
- Install: about 7 days
Bad "ok"
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I considered Time Warner cable, but after paying for the service and then paying for equipment and other fees, was way higher.
Took them a bit to get service working because lines were not connected and could not get to me for several days.
Next could not get wi-fi to work after a hour with tech support "I" figured out it did not like special keys in the password.
Then when tried to get xbox connected, was told "they don't support it.
Price is good, service not so good.
Would still consider keeping if xbox could work.
Only got the service for internet and the xbox and now can't use for xbox.
member for 6.7 years, 21 visits, last login: 214 days ago
lodged 233 days ago
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| | I can help... What kind of gateway do you have?
You need to setup port forwarding for your XBOX.
If you tell me which gateway you have I can walk you through it. | |
| | | | Re: I can help... Thanks but just gave up and quit service. | |
| | | | | Re: I can help... Sorry to hear that.  | |
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| Review by toolman25 - Location: Cincinnati,Hamilton,OH
- Cost Contract price not specified.
- Cincinnati Bell
Good "Good Picture quality Faster internet speeds, bundling"
Bad "picture freezes intermittently not all the time and bad phone support"
Overall "Good for the price and Picture Quality"
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I finally qualify for Fioptics through Fiber to the Node. I ordered through Cincinnati Bell sales person. Getting installed was slow, installer did not have drill left at home. The installer had to rig new phone line in existing cable hole and twist tied the phone line on the cable line. Had 1 HD DVR and 4 HD boxes with whole home DVR. The boxes they provided were made by ZTE and the router they provided was a ZYXEL with an adapter for the TV to connect to the existing coax cables. After the install everything worked until it rained. Then no internet connection and static on landline. Got somebody out that day traced it to a problem on the street. The tech said it was an open local and that they fixed the problem. After that I have had no problems when it rains or snows. I even got their 30 megabyte internet. ZYXEL Modem was provisioned to 50 megabytes to support the TV and internet service. Will update if anything changes.
February 2013
Went to Time Warner Cable.
Had issues with my internet dropping and constant picture freezes on tv. Had three techs out said their was no problems at all, and everything looked fine.
Plus I was able to get the $200.00 Gift card and a good promotion for becoming a cable customers. I decided to get their signature home service. I will write a review for Time Warner Cable when I am done trying it out.
member for 320 days, 46 visits, last login: 79 days ago
updated 234 days ago
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| Review by jduffy - Location: Cincinnati,Hamilton,OH
- Cost: $40 per month (12 month contract)
- Install: about 7 days
- Cincinnati Bell
Good "Reliable"
Bad "Slow, line prone to interference, have to bundle to get $40 price"
Overall "For a few more, bucks a month, Road Runner is much faster"
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I was a long-time Cincinnati Bell Zoomtown subscriber. Gosh, I think it was more than eight years. Zoomtown was reliable, but being a ham radio operator, anytime I used any real power (greater than 25 watts) to my high frequency transmitters, Zoomtown would lose the link. This was a major problem especially when I moved one of my Cincinnati Bell land-lines to VOIP with Vonage. The other issue is the ADSL2 was supposed to be installed over a year ago to take the speed up to be competitive against Road Runner. It never happened. I think Cincinnati Bell is in such bad financial shape over the acquisition and disposition of Broadwing, that they simply cannot invest in their network.
Several weeks ago, I ordered a trial of Business Class Road Runner. 768 up and 6 down. I could also run my own servers for web (I could do this on Zoomtown) and email (I could not run email servers on Zoomtown). Also, RR gives me a dedicated IP address. The price is $59.95, about $20 more than Zoomtown. But ultimately I will move the home phone to VOIP. I am now paying Cincinnati Bell $40 for the Complete Connections phone package now, so when I go to VOIP that will run $25 a month so the net difference is $5.
I gave RR a try while keeping Zoomtown. Wow, what a difference in speed. I mean it is incredible and the upload is a bit faster than Zoomtown. So I had Zoomtown disconnected and keeping RR.
There was one other issue with Zoomtown. Tremendous latency with some websites - click and wait and wait and wait. Many other ZT users said it was problems with the DNS servers.
If I did not have the interference issue and if the speed would have been upgraded, I probably would have stayed with Zoomtown. But ZT stopped being competitive around here against RR, so I got tired of waiting and made the move. I am glad I did.
Now getting almost 10Mbs download and 1.5 Mbs upload with Road Runner. I have not seen anything comparable with Zoomtown. It was worth the change.
Still glad I made switch to Road Runner.
July 2012 Update - Cincinnati Bell has been rolling out their Fibre Service in some areas of their market but it is still not in my community. I think the reason is that they have so much debt they cannot afford to really roll their service out to the entire market.
I did move from Business Class to Turbo Consumer Road Runner to get a better discount from Time Warner.
December 2012 - If Cincinnati Bell would ever get Fioptics out this way, I would like to give it a try. I understand for the money, it is a lot faster than Time Warner. Why it is not here yet is a mystery. CBT is just so slow to do anything. Not a serious competitor in this market anymore.
member for 7.1 years, 549 visits, last login: 1 days ago
updated 278 days ago
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| Review by phrozendemon - Location: Newport,Campbell,KY
- Cost Contract price not specified.
- Cincinnati Bell
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First let me say that I am not satisfied with some of the business choices made by CinBell. To begin the call center was outsourced to the Philippians, I understand that this cuts cost, however one of the most important parts of a business is customer facing support.
The second issue I have is that you fail to invest in fiber optic cable in new subdivisions. My home is 4-5 years old in a new subdivision and has all underground utilities. Insight (now owned by TWC) installed FTTH (Fiber to the home) in every home, while you chose to use copper. I understand that this was would be a large investment for you to spend, however the cost of digging up every underground cable and replacing this wire is massively more. As far as a return on investment according to your Q1 2012 results your reported 147k locations with fioptics and 40k subscribers. That would make equal a market penetration rate of about 27%, would seems good to me.
When I talked to your service rep, I tried to tell her that I have been having problems all week with no dial tone, a 60Hz hum on the line caused most likley by a short somewhere in the line. A tech came out and was able to resolve this issue on two occasions this week but he was unable to find a root cause for the issue and advised that if I had more problems to call back and setup an appointment. But the issue keeps reoccurring.
I have been a Zoomtown users since it was first started in the 384k days, and never had problems. I moved to a new house 4-5 years ago and still had rock solid service, until this week. After your representative spoke with her supervisor she advised me that copper wires degrade over time and there is a performance drop. I partially agree with this statement, yes copper wiring is sensitive to heat, humidity, UV, and other issues that can cause stretching of the wire and degradation of the plastic jackets. However my wiring is all underground and direct burial underground wire is wrapped in layers of aluminum, plastics, and water resistant gel. There is no exposure to the elements, even the SNI has gel to resist humidity in it. My understanding of this is that the source of degradation would be the telephone wires to my subdivision that would wear out causing problems with multiple homes in my neighborhood. I do not think that its a coincidence that me losing dial tone multiple times a week and slow unstable internet happening together and in the same week are a coincidence and a result of the age of the copper wire.
None the less the supervisor at the call center made the decision for me of switching to fiber, telling me that since I do not have fioptics but rather copper wire that the signal would degrade over time. I have scheduled an appointment to have Insight Communications come out and enable FTTH DOCSIS 3.0 internet service. A solid stable 10mbits sounds better to me than 3.5 for $30 a month. Also having the option for higher speeds up to 50mbits is nice for future proofing. Why is 3.5mbits not good enough?, well Netflix HD steams at 4.8 mbits, Youtube 1080p videos stream at up to 8mbits. These are all popular services used by millions of customers.
In conclusion I suggest that you remember the needs of your customers, sure a lot of people don't even know what a megabit is and just use the internet for simple browsing, however there is a large portion of people that use it for much more. (Netflix has 26.5 million subscribers in the US and 10% of youtube's popular videos are in 1080p with much more in 720p)
member for 1.2 years, 1 visits, last login: 1.2 years ago
updated 1.2 years ago
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